


Teeth

by clandestine7



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2664260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clandestine7/pseuds/clandestine7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an endless summer Rin’s teeth are sharp and his smiles are brilliant, and Haruka is stuck in fragments of time made up of nothing else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> This is for day 4 of RinHaru Week, more specifically the Supernatural AU prompt, though it's more supernatural/bizarre in general as opposed to being a specific type of supernatural AU like merpeople or ghosts of whatnot. I stepped far out of my comfort zone with this but generally had a really fun time writing it (and kind of a painful time editing it), and overall I'm glad I stuck this through even though I'm still kinda unsure about the finished product. Aaaaaahhhhh I'm scared I wrote something totally incomprehensible and I only had one day to edit!! /stresses stresses stresses/

Time seems to have slowed down this summer. Haruka feels a bit sluggish, a bit heat-drugged, like there are things going on in his peripherals that he can’t summon the energy to pay attention to.

He finds that he can’t even remember yesterday all that clearly. Did he swim? Did the ocean rush around his ankles, did his feet sink into sand, did the gulls shriek into his ears and did he come home with the handful of seashells that sits on his kitchen counter? He thinks so. He can’t quite remember.  

He knows Rin is there most days – a blaze of red, a flash of teeth, a burst of sound, shoulders and elbows and knuckles bumping into him. This, mostly, is what Haruka remembers of summer: not specifics but ghostly sensations. When Rin is around, there is always contact, and he remembers Rin on his skin and in his ears.

He remembers Rin bent over on the beach picking up shells, pants rolled up to his knees and hair fluttering out of his ponytail. Smiling with the sun hitting his face, too bright to look at, putting shells into Haruka’s hands, into the pocket sewn into his shirt, hands so close to Haruka’s heart.

Haruka remembers summer like it isn’t all around him, like he’s just living in fractures, in moments of Rin. And anything that isn’t those moments might as well not be at all, for all he can remember of them.  

Rin is coming up the stairs now, the ones that lead down from Haruka’s house to right by the shoreline. When he sees Haruka sitting in wait, a grin splits his lips and he lifts a grocery bag, almost dislodging the hat that sits at a slant on his head.

“Want ice cream?” he calls, a lot louder than he needs to because the distance between them is only twenty stairs or so, but the sun slinks slowly toward the ocean and gives the feeling that no one else is around to hear.

Haruka notices something off about Rin’s walk the nearer he gets. “Are your legs okay?” he asks, when he’s sure that Rin is nursing a faint limp – he hardly puts weight on every other step.

Rin reaches him, flops down beside him on the step and stretches his legs out with a loud sigh. “Yeah, my knee’s just kinda sore. Dunno why.” He rustles around in the bag, pulls out two popsicles and hands one over. “I got you blue.”

Haruka tears open the wrapping, the crinkling sound like the crinkling feeling of concern inside of him. He watches Rin break off a bite of his popsicle, the ice as red as his hair.

“Have you been warming up before running?” he says, even though he can’t figure out where the question came from or what it has to do with anything. He’s struck with the urge to tap the side of his head and though there’s something in there to get out, like water swimming around making it hard to focus.

Rin looks at him like he’s asked if Rin has been remembering to breathe. “F’course I have, I’m not an idiot.”

_That’s questionable_ , Haruka thinks.

Rin elbows him in the side. “Hey, shut up,” he says, and Haruka wonders if he’d spoken aloud.

But Rin just takes another bite of his popsicle, looks out over the stairs and rooftops. “Stop worrying so much. It’s just a sore knee.”

Haruka thinks there should be worry, especially on Rin’s face, but all there is is calm, and a sunset glow.

“So, what do you wanna do today?” Rin says.

Haruka looks at the ocean, glimmering faintly, swaying back and forth. “Dunno,” he says. He doesn’t know what there _is_ to do. What do they usually do together? And isn’t it too late to start today? “What did we do yesterday?”

But Rin doesn’t hear him, distracted instead by his popsicle slipping off its stick and splattering onto the step. He swears, and groans, and then frowns at what quickly becomes a puddle of slush between his sneakers. His lips are pinker than usual, from the food coloring. Sweat shines, dew-like, against his neck, into the dip of his clavicles above the swoop of his tank top. It’s warm, but not _that_ warm, and Haruka wonders.

“Are you sick?”

Rin looks at him like he’s crazy again. “What? No. Stop worrying about me, jeez. Worry about yourself.” He tosses his popsicle stick into the grocery bag, wipes his arm across his mouth.

“Worry about what?”

“Haru, there are always things to worry about,” Rin says vaguely, profoundly, with an equally vague motion of his hands.

Haruka frowns, but Rin pays it no heed. He grabs Haruka’s wrist suddenly, gives it a tug. His fingers are hot, like fever; his eyes are much the same.

“If you’re not gonna eat it, then at least let me have it. I spent good money on that,” he says, and sinks his teeth into Haruka’s popsicle.

Haruka makes a displeased sound, pulls his arm back. But the popsicle is already half-melted, and the jerky motion dislodges it from its stick. It splatters onto his shoe.

Rin looks at it for a moment, then at him. And then he laughs, and laughs, and laughs. His tongue is tinged purple, and Haruka is annoyed and entertained at the same time.

“Shut up, you’re too noisy.”

“You’re such an idiot,” Rin says, as though it’s a complement. He grabs Haruka’s wrist, jumps to his feet and pulls Haruka with him. “Now that you’re done, we can do something. Let’s swim!”

Haruka feels his breath whip away, as he struggles to keep from tripping down the steps after Rin. Once he gets his footing back, and then his breath, he does nothing to pull free.

“I’m not wearing my swimsuit,” he calls, but Rin laughs and laughs and doesn’t listen, just pulls him toward the half-dome of sun sitting on the ocean, pulls him with burning fingers, and Haruka has no reason to resist.

* * *

There are some things about Rin that aren’t quite normal. His teeth, most obviously, and yet somehow Haruka has never questioned why they are all so sharp. Like an animal’s rather than a person’s.

It’s only recently, Haruka feels, that he’s begun to notice them. He’s always been aware of Rin’s teeth, and yet now – and he can’t pinpoint when this started – he is _aware_ of them, every time Rin grins at him, says his name, so much as opens his mouth.

But why does it matter so much now, that Rin’s teeth are sharp when they have always been, and it has never meant anything before? How did it never mean anything before?

And what – and this is the question that leaves him feeling unanchored, like there is a whole depth of things to be seen that he’s been looking right over – what does it mean now?

* * *

Rin’s father’s grave is in the mountains, at the top of a hill that has just one rocky path sewn into slippery too-long grass. The actual grave is on flatland, though, overlooking the ocean, and Haruka has never been here before but he can feel instantly that this is a place of peace.

He faces the water while Rin is off behind him at his father’s gravestone. A breeze has kicked up over the ocean, just enough that Haruka can tune out the sound of Rin’s voice. There are a few boats out on the sea, miles away. They look almost like birds with their white sails, clustered close together and bobbing away on the water’s surface. He holds up his thumb and index finger, closes an eye and fits the boats into a space a few centimeters wide. He tries to find where the ocean meets the sky and fit it into the gap next, but everything is such a pure, crystalline blue that there’s hardly a division at all. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe, if he swam far enough, he could swim right out of the ocean and up into the sky.

“Y’know,” Rin says, voice coming from right behind him. Haruka doesn’t jump, but his heart does – a thump as it hits the top of his ribcage, and a thump as it falls back down. Rin steps up beside him, just a quiet scuff of shoes on dirt and gravel.

“Y’know, whenever I come here, there’s wind,” Rin says. He sounds calm, pensive. Haruka listens, ocean glittering into his eyes and leaving stars when he blinks. “Sometimes I think it’s my dad, even though that’s kinda weird I guess. But sometimes I think that nothing ever goes away, like things just keep getting added to the world but you can’t just get rid of matter, and maybe when people die they’re still there.”

Haruka turns his head, finds Rin looking at him patiently. He doesn’t know how to follow up, but he thinks Rin will keep waiting until he does.

“Like…ghosts? Or dead bodies?”

Rin snorts gracelessly, gets that look of _Please don’t try to be funny, you’re not good at it._ His expression softens when he looks away, and Haruka feels that crinkling feeling again, but the other version of it. The one that hurts a little bit, like a bruise, like something lingering that he wants to hoard closer.

“Like, I dunno,” Rin says. He gestures – towards the ocean, or the air over it, or the clouds. “Both, or neither. But like, people will always be there if you believe in them I guess.” He frowns, defensive. “Don’t laugh, okay. I’m trying to tell you something personal.”

“Okay. I’m not laughing.”

Rin gives a quieter snort, just a puff of air out of his nose. “The world’s so big, isn’t it?” he says.

The ocean itself is big enough, Haruka thinks; thinking of the world is trying to think of too much, nearly gives him vertigo.  

“But it’s also so small,” Rin says. “I mean, it’s all connected. All the air is just air. And all the water is just water. If I ever go far away, we’ll still be connected by the water.”

A bubble ruptures somewhere in the depths of Haruka’s stomach, or his heart, or somewhere where it starts to burn. “Where are you going?” he says, like he’s run out of breath, like he’s lost his footing and a knee-jerk burst of sound has come out of his windpipe.

Rin knots his eyebrows together, the same bemused look from yesterday, from the other day. “Calm down. I didn’t say I was going anywhere.”

Haruka doesn’t know why he feels like arguing. He shuts his mouth, looks away.

“So. Whattaya wanna do now?” Rin asks him.

“I don’t know.”

Rin laughs. “Haru! That’s so boring. We can throw rocks off the cliff – bet you I could get mine farther. We can get lunch. We can...we can put flowers in our hair!”

Haruka looks at him in disbelief, follows Rin’s gaze to the ground, to the little bushels of flowers – or probably they’re weeds – lining the pathway. It’s like before he can blink Rin has a handful – has them plucked and cupped in his palm and is coming back to Haruka, excitement in his eyes and in the show of the jagged tips of his teeth.

“Are you serious?” Haruka says, even though a part of him has already given in. Rin somehow attracts all the light, somehow glows, somehow is the most vibrant thing Haruka has ever seen, and when he proposes crazy things he proposes them with so much enthusiasm that Haruka just wants to give up and let himself be dragged along.

But there are appearances to uphold, and also he’s a little scared of seeming too eager – scared that Rin will realize he could get away with anything, that Haruka is drawn to his everything like moths are to light, and flame, and warm bodies.

Rin reaches out with the first flower, and Haruka grabs his wrist.

“I don’t want flowers in my hair.”

“Don’t be scared,” Rin teases, and he pulls his arm out of Haruka’s grip and then just moves in again, tucks the flower into Haruka’s hair, perched right above his ear. Haruka feels like every strong thing inside of him has turned to matchsticks, like he could be toppled over from the inside out.  

“Don’t be scared of trying new things,” Rin says, softer, eyes on the flowers in his hands, but a second later they flit to Haruka’s face, and the grin is back.

Rin enjoys himself too much. There is truly too much enjoyment within him, which is why Haruka always enjoys himself too – it’s Rin’s enjoyment spilling over and flowing into him, needing someplace to be contained.

Rin selects the largest flower – a round yellow center with petals bent and folded but still a vibrant white – and puts it at the very top of Haruka’s head. He sniggers, carries on, and Haruka tries not to let Rin’s fingers in his hair make him go glassy eyed.

He watches Rin bite his lip in concentration, or maybe to keep from smiling too much. He watches Rin select each flower carefully from among the others in his hand, sometimes with a quick twirl of the stem that turns the flowers into momentary pinwheels.

When his head feels like it’s covered in bugs – because without being able to see them, this is what the weight of all the flowers feels like – he watches Rin collect more, watches a few of them fall out of Rin’s hands and get picked up by the breeze as Rin heads back to him.

But before Rin can put any more into his hair, he plucks a flower out of Rin’s hands. Rin looks surprised, and then pleased, and then he nods.

Haruka sticks it behind Rin’s ear because it’s the only place that makes sense, and then somehow it looks like should have always been there. Rin is the type of person who could walk around with flowers in his hair, and probably nobody would say anything.

He takes another flower, and is a little clumsy this time, lets their skin touch, their fingers bump. He feels like Rin is watching him, but maybe that’s just because the back of his neck feels hot. Maybe the heat-drugged feeling comes from Rin, from the heat that comes from Rin that Haruka doesn’t know if he’s imagining or not. It makes him feel slow and it makes him feel secure, and he wants to twine his fingers through Rin’s hair because it looks hot also, like it’s gotten its color from absorbing the sunlight.

Rin holds perfectly still and is perfectly silent, and Haruka just looks from the flowers in Rin’s hands, to the ones in his own hands, to the ones he’s placed haphazard in Rin’s hair, sometimes with a struggle because they often want to fall out – and Rin chuckles a little bit, whenever Haruka’s having a difficult time, and the heat spreads over Haruka’s face but he’s too stubborn to quit.

“What does it look like?” Rin says, once his hands are all empty.

“Um,” Haruka says, which sums it up well. It doesn’t look like a garden, and most of the petals are creased and limp.  

Rin takes out his phone and holds it above his head, looks up into it. He brushes some hair off of his face, fiddles with a few flowers. “I look pretty good, don’t you think?”

_Yeah,_ Haruka hears himself saying, and for a second he panics, doesn’t know if the words were out loud or in his thoughts. But Rin just moves the phone around, tilts his head this way and that. He’s smiling a small, contented smile – the kind of smile people don’t realize they’re making – and Haruka wants this. Wants it every day, every moment he has.

But every moment he can think of is this, and surely that can’t be everything.

* * *

Makoto’s house has been empty since he left, but sometimes a tawny cat curls up on the steps. It jumps into Haruka’s lap whenever he sits down – at least, it must, because it does this time and once it’s settled Haruka recognizes something familiar in the moment, kind of like déjà-vu.

He knows this is where he goes when he doesn’t want to see Rin, and he only ever doesn’t want to see Rin when he’s worried he’s seeing him too much.

The evening clouds chase away both the sun and its heat, and Haruka feels like his brain can work faster. How long has Makoto been gone? That much he doesn’t know exactly. How many days of summer have gone by already? That too, seems too vast to count, too busy with Rin, like he’s being forced to not remember.

He asks the cat when summer will end, but of course it doesn’t answer. Sometimes, when he sits here, he starts feeling nervous when he thinks about how little he can tune into, how little he feels a part of, and how little energy he has to even care most of the time. And it’s only when he cares that he feels nervous, and it gets frightening, the twisting dark feeling in his chest that is all the emptiness he usually doesn’t have to think about.

When he’s nervous he starts asking questions, like

_Rin’s teeth._

and

_This summer_

and

_Am I happy or do I want to be somewhere else?_

Makoto’s house stands behind him, but it is empty and foreboding, and the windows are dark and he can almost hear a sound like wind sweeping through the insides, a gutted moan.  

And sometimes he thinks he sees flashes of red, slipping behind a house or reflecting off of a skylight on a roof or down by the beach, and he thinks of Rin and feels calm. But the glimpses aren’t here, they’re there, apart from him, and it’s discomfort all over again, a shuttered feeling in his throat.

Today it feels a bit like drowning, or he assumes so, not that he knows what it feels like. But Makoto does, he remembers with a jolt. He remembers rain and waves and thrashing, a desperate sink or swim, and the drag of Makoto’s legs on the sand.

He remembers the drag of his own limbs, but in a pool, and there had been screams and shouts that the water in his ears hadn’t managed to wash out. There were lights, and flashes, and his vision had gone skewed. Something had snared his arms and legs, something like iron-fast spider webs, like ropes scrambling over him. He lost the surface of the water, lost all sense of up and down, lost the ability to do more than pull, helpless, against the snare.

He saw darkness, and he gave up.

Was that real?

* * *

The storefronts are unmarked, and the windows reflect. As he walks past he feels like he’s walking by a row of people with their backs turned, so many stiff shoulders. Heavy shadows all around, and even the sky is being covered by clouds now that the sun’s almost down.

He never has to wander far before Rin shows up, and this is another thing that is not quite right. Rin always knows when he’s being looked for, when he’s being wanted. Haruka seems to recall that things weren’t always this easy, that Rin used to be associated with concepts like _far_ and _angry_ and _miss_ and _wait_.

He remembers a child crying, hair wet and goggles clenched in a fist, remembers the child leaving in a flurry of red hair and winter scarf. And then the child came back as Rin, aged up and bitter-looking, and didn’t want him anymore.

Only he did want him anymore.

Because when Rin pushed him into that fence and crowded close and demanded that _You’re going to swim for me,_ he hadn’t been looking at Haruka’s eyes, had he?  

Haruka remembers the chain-link digging into his shoulder blades, remembers it cold and unyielding in his fingers. He thinks this is a new memory, or a new version of an old one. Rin’s mouth had been so close and so downturned, and if that was now Haruka’s afraid he might lean forward and kiss Rin just to push the frown away.

Rin is on the beach this time, a dark silhouette sitting halfway to the water line. Haruka slips between two shops, ducks under the railing and makes the short drop onto sand. Rin hears him, leans back on his elbows and tips his head back to look at him upside down.

“Hey,” Haruka says when he’s close enough. He can already feel the sand steeling into his shoes, but he leaves them on anyway when he takes a seat next to Rin. “What are you doing here?”

“Dunno,” Rin says, sitting up straight. He could bleed right into the sunset, is all the right colors – reds and golds, and just a general radiance Haruka’s almost tired of being dazzled by all the time – can’t Rin just give it a rest? “Just felt like it, I guess.”

Haruka frowns. There’s a rebuttal waiting at the back of his mouth, but there’s a resistant force keeping the words out of his head. He sighs loudly, falls back onto the sand.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Rin says. He’s staring down at Haruka, caution and questions all over his face.

“It’s fine.”

“If you say so,” Rin says, sounding unconvinced but also accepting. He lies on his side, arm cushioned beneath his head, and smiles. “So, whattaya wanna do now?”

Haruka thinks of several things. Touch Rin’s face, and see if the kindness there makes it feel soft. Touch Rin’s hair, too, to see what red feels like between his fingers. Swim into the ocean, and take Rin with him, and see if they can swim long enough to see what’s on the other side, to see if they can escape this dull, drowsy state that is Haruka’s every day.

What he says is “Nothing.”

“Haru, c’mon,” Rin says, through a laugh. “Throw out an idea. Take a leap of faith.”

“Did I…did I see you earlier today?”

Rin’s eyebrows go far up, threaten to lose themselves beneath his hair.

“I…don’t think so?” he says slowly. Haruka can’t tell if he’s trying to be funny or if he’s trying to be safe. But his smile has gone glass-like, his teeth look like stalactites, his eyes are like caves, empty.

The sight makes Haruka’s heart kick, a panicked attempt at escape. He feels a bit sick, feels like his stomach has disappeared. He brings his hands to his face, tries to press away the afterimage.

“Haru?”

“Something’s wrong,” Haruka says.

He hears the sand rustle, imagines Rin shifting, and he’s stuck between wanting to be closer and wanting to roll away. Everything is him being stuck between wanting to go one way and wanting to go the other. This entire summer, all these days that aren’t in order, that just happen to him and don’t give him time to make anything happen himself.

“Are you okay?” Rin asks.

Haruka turns his head, peeks at Rin between his fingers and finds worry pinched into Rin’s face. Rin’s hand rests between them on the sand, like he had been reaching.

“Something’s going on,” Haruka says. “Something’s – someone’s – I’m just seeing you, over and over. I don’t even know when.”

Rin blinks, looks hurt. “Do you…d’you wanna not hang out as much? That’s okay, if you do.”

Haruka exhales, frustrated. But that’s proof, then, that something is being avoided. His head feels like fog, and Rin is like metal plating – protecting something. Haruka crosses his arms over his eyes, feels the last dregs of sunlight on his face, just enough to keep the drowsiness around. If he falls asleep here, where will he be next?

“That’s not what I said.”

“Are you okay?” Rin says softly.

_No,_ Haruka thinks. Rin’s hand touches his elbow, fingers curling tentatively, and Haruka thinks, _Maybe._

Rin gives an abrupt tug. Haruka’s eyes fly open, and then shut on instinct when his face is smushed against Rin’s chest. Rin has an arm around him, hand splayed between his shoulder blades, and Haruka’s arms are up in defense, trapped between them. His back is ramrod straight.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“You looked kinda sad. I’m giving you a hug.”

“I can’t be standing up?”

Rin chuckles; Haruka feels it more than he hears it.

“Well, not when I’m not. I mean, I guess I could hug your feet, but…”

But there’s no one else around to see, Haruka reminds himself; no reason to feel embarrassed, no reason to be so uptight. No reason to feel uncomfortable at all, because what’s a hug, even? Two bodies in contact.

He remembers, quickly, Rin’s arms locked tight around him, cold water but hot skin, hotter tears on his shoulder. _Best sight,_ supplies his mind to him in a whisper. Then the image swims away and he realizes he’s holding his breath.

“Stop pushing me out,” Rin says into his hair, and Haruka feels a swell in his chest that is maybe delirious and maybe dread.

_Stop pushing,_ he wants to respond. _Stop always pushing._

But also: _Push more, give me all the answers. I’m tired._

* * *

When he steps into Makoto’s house – just swings the door open on silent hinges – he feels anger. It’s actual wind, picking up slowly around his feet, swirling up his legs, and then all of a sudden it howls into his face, forcing him to shut his eyes. He grabs the door frame and clings, ducks his head and hopes he won’t be blown right back out.

He realizes the howling is his voice, yelling things back at him that he remembers yelling in that déjà-vu way. No actual words but sounds like words, and he sees Makoto’s face and Rin’s face, night sky and a locker slamming and fireworks popping and orange sky reflecting in a still swimming pool. Rin and Makoto with mouths moving silently, urgently, their drowned out words like blows to Haruka’s body, and he feels like he _hates_ them.

The wind ceases almost as soon as it comes. His clothes stop billowing, and he stumbles through the door. The silence eats up every corner of the house, and his ears ring with it. He feels dissected, like the bare walls are hollowing him out, sucking him into the shadowy corners at the ends of the floorboards, like he’s losing even more of everything and like he’s going to be the only person left.

_Rin_ , he thinks. When did all the others go away, and how long has it been just him and Rin?

He tries to think back, and the haziest image is one of flowers in Rin’s hands. White petals with little yellow centers, and the crescent-moon tips of Rin’s fingernails. They have to be Rin’s fingernails, because Rin is the only other person, and he’s always there, and in a moment or five hundred Haruka will be somewhere else and Rin will be there or close by, and this will go on for forever.

The tired part of him doesn’t think it’s so bad. The other part of him, the part that feels like it’s struggling to wake up, feels something like prey.

* * *

“Hey, are you okay?” Rin says.

They’re sitting at the edge of an empty pool, legs hanging over into nothing. Rin’s voice echoes; they’re inside. No lights, just whatever’s coming in through broken windows high up in the walls – moonlight, starlight, passing planes, fireflies.

“I’m fine,” Haruka says. He’s sitting too close; their shoulders almost touch and Rin’s heat is like anesthetic. But when he braces his hands against the edge and scoots away, Rin is right there again without moving.

“I kinda miss this place,” Rin says, his voice floating up to the ceiling and then settling back down around them again, like snow falling softly, like something lacking energy.

Haruka glances at him. The light is patchy but he can still see Rin staring out over the pool, toward the ladder on the other side, lips lifted wistfully.

And then Rin turns his head, grins. “Romantic, right?”

People can’t be this alluring, Haruka thinks. Too discerning, and too available, and too cheerful. Alarmingly desirable. This is Rin but not Rin. Rin idealized. Rin trivialized. Rin with carnivore teeth and a captivating smile.  

“Haru…” Rin’s eyebrows draw together, the smile slips.

_Oh no_ , Haruka thinks, _Oh no_ , because Rin’s eyes have flickered nervously downward, to the space between their hands, and Haruka feels all the dread in the world solidify into one icy-hot mass around his heart.

Rin’s fingers bump into his, and Haruka thinks, _I need to go somewhere else._

* * *

The shrine walls give privacy, and the trees all around work like soundproofing, but the sky is still overhead so there’s always the feeling of having air to breathe.  

There’s a piece of paper crumpled in his hand; he looks down and sees _half-luck_ written on the bit that sticks out of his fist. That seems about right – neither here nor there, forward motion nor backward motion, a dormant middle-line.

So why is he here, and when is now?

The second question probably doesn’t matter. As for the first, he thinks his head feels lighter. He can look at the ground and see all the stones and pebbles sealed into the cement pathway, all the specks of blues and greens, can even see the cracks in some of them, hairline fissures that make them look like damaged robin’s eggs. The details are so vivid, smooth stone and gritty concrete; for a moment he’s in awe that the world can be so clear, that colors can be so opaque and that his eyes can feel textures for him. That something that isn’t Rin can stun him by just existing.  

He looks around, but he still doesn’t know what to do. He isn’t here to ask for good fortune, doesn’t have any money to offer. Or maybe he already did, if the slip he’s holding is any indication. The offering hall is ahead of him, through the rows of stone lanterns flanking the pathway. The exit is behind him, down the steps and through the trees, but that can’t be the right way – who knows when he’ll get to come back?

And then, like he’s finally realized it’s truly there, he holds up the fortune slip. Feels like he has to struggle to open his hand, but then he has the paper between his fingers and is smoothing out the creases. Each groove in the paper feels like a mountain, a valley, each edge as dangerous as a razor. His breath comes shallow.

All of the columns are blank, save three squished together in the middle.  

_Travel should not take, rather be taken_

and

_Sun shines in all seasons, but only questions bring answers_

and something that isn’t words at all, but an ink drawing of a fox sitting on its heels, much like the stone foxes guarding the shrine’s entrance.

Haruka’s arms start to prickle, his heart starts to race.

It can’t be like this. This was his last try. His last chance. In here he doesn’t feel the sun like it’s something pushing him into the ground, in here there is clarity. He saw the pebbles – he _saw_ them! So why can’t he see anything else, why sun and why foxes and why travel, why can’t he find the way out of this summer?

Maybe, he thinks desperately, maybe if he tries. Maybe he can supply his own answers, maybe sun and maybe foxes and maybe travel, maybe he’s close.

_Where should I go?_  he asks. His thoughts go silent, and nothing else appears on the fortune.

_Does Rin know?_

Silence. Air. The tree leaves whisper behind his back.

_Is Rin…_

He doesn’t know what to think. Can’t think what he doesn’t know. He swallows.

_Is it okay to love him?_

A gust of wind passes through the shrine. It flutters his hair and sets the bells clanging together. A flicker of red out of the corner of his eye, and he spins around, heart in his throat.

There’s a bird hopping around atop the stone wall, giving out little twitters, cocking its head this way and that. Its eyes are beady and black, and they stare, reminding him he isn’t the only one here.

Haruka hears a scuff – his shoes on the path, beginning his escape. The bird takes off and flits into the trees, but Haruka is still running, down the steps as the panic rises up his throat and into his head and makes him feel like he’s going to float away.

* * *

 The tub is empty, except for him. The porcelain is cold against his heels, through his clothes, up his arms. He grips the rim, muscles tensing to pull himself up, but he loses motivation at the last moment and slumps back down. He’s done this a few times, four, five. For some reason, no water had flowed when he had turned on the tap.

For some reason, his sink is full of seashells.

For some reason, when he’d first climbed in, he’d thought he’d heard voices in the hall – three of them, anxiously discussing his whereabouts, searching for him. Creaking floorboards and rushed footsteps, and then one of them – the one that sounded sunny and yellow – had announced that he wasn’t upstairs, and all had gone quiet.

It feels like something that happened long, long ago. A story his house is trying to tell him, but it’s run out of breath.

And then there’s a _crack!_ like a bullet, or like a tree branch splitting, and his fingers go rigid on the porcelain.

But it was just the house shifting on its foundation. And now it’s hunkered down for the time being, turned back into walls that don’t make a sound, leaving Haruka alone.

Too alone. He needs Rin, hates needing Rin. He hates _needing_ , but Rin is the only one, which makes him the only one with something to give.

* * *

Light flashes in his eyes. He winces, brings up an arm, and the glare is gone. His window is open wide, the curtains flutter.

Rin is talking to him, standing a few paces away, at the other end of the desk. His hands move around animatedly and Haruka can’t hear a word he’s saying, is fixated on the glow of excitement on his face, on the bit of hair that is caught in the corner of his mouth, on how stunning his happiness is. He wonders how long Rin has been talking, wonders what could be so thrilling as to make him outshine the sun. He tries to listen, but all he catches are words like _go_ and _going_ and _far_.

“Rin,” he says, and Rin stops talking, hands raised like he’s been surprised. “I’m going to try something.”

Rin looks confused. “What?”

“I’m…I’m gonna try something. Come here.”

Two steps and Rin is right in front of him, head tilted in curiosity. “What are you trying?”

Haruka touches Rin’s face. Then he touches Rin’s hair, hooks a finger into the piece going into Rin’s mouth and pulls it out. Then he touches Rin’s face again, to see if it feels like anything other than skin, but his hair had just felt like hair and his cheek just feels like a cheek – hard bone under the tips of his fingers, fleshy farther down.

Rin starts to lift a hand – to remove Haruka’s? to cover it?

“Stop,” Haruka says, and Rin stops.

Rin’s skin isn’t just skin, though, because Haruka has felt his own skin and it’s never this warm. Rin’s skin is like coals without the pain and it heats Haruka through. But he doesn’t feel tired for once, just feels very, very calm.

He leans forward, tips his head up, and kisses Rin. He thinks of it as another way of touching Rin’s face – touching Rin’s lips with his own lips, just for a moment, just for long enough to close his eyes and feel Rin’s warmth radiate across his entire face and then to pull back without a word.

He looks Rin in the eyes and says, “Okay.”

“Um.” Rin’s eyes flit to the side, toward where Haruka’s hand is still on his cheek. “Um.”

“I said okay,” Haruka says.

Rin’s hand covers his, kind of slaps it too fast and too loud and then recoils, and Rin looks like he’s torn between apologizing and jumping out of the window.

Haruka has just enough time to think _This is weird,_ and something vaguely along the lines of how this Rin is not very alluring at all, before their lips are touching again, and then he thinks, _But maybe this is fine._

It is alluring when Rin’s arms go around his waist, and when his hands go into Rin’s hair, which is feathery soft and flows all over his fingers. It’s alluring when Rin’s teeth scrape over his lip because he can tell that they could hurt, but they don’t.  

And then they’re gone, and Rin says, breath hot against his mouth, “You can love me.”

Haruka pushes him back, but not far. He clings to Rin’s arms. For balance, for anchor, he feels a moment of dizziness.

“How did you know?” he says. His voice sounds strange – panicked, harsh, like it’s scraping through a grater. 

Panic takes to Rin’s face; he seems to have lost his words. Haruka realizes how tightly he’s holding onto Rin’s arms and lets go, hands falling to his sides.

“Know what?” Rin says quietly.

For some reason, Haruka feels like he’s going to start hyperventilating. There is something crucial here, something he cannot miss. “Were you there?” he says.

The smile on Rin’s face is off-center, rickety. “What? No. W-what are you talking about?”

It’s the stutter that gives him away – Rin knows this too, for his eyes widen for a moment, and he looks toward the door on the other side of the room like he’s ready to bolt.  

“Were you at the shrine?”

Rin shakes his head.

“Were you there?” Haruka says again, his voice breaking.

“I wasn’t.” Rin glances at him, looks pained. “Really, Haru. I wasn’t there.”

“Then how did you – Why did you say that?”

“I don’t know! It just – I just – it just came out, I don’t know why. I just said it, I don’t – it didn’t come from anywhere. I mean –”

Haruka doesn’t believe a word, and he sees that Rin can tell – there’s a pleading look in his eyes to _Stop, please, just let this drop._

Haruka can’t, though. This is confirmation. He feels a moment of elation. This is _confirmation_ ; things are going to make sense.

But Rin lets out a heavy breath – it steals right out of the room and takes the rest of the air with it. His voice, when he speaks, is flat. “I’m sorry. I take it back. Don’t worry about it.”

He turns and starts to leave, and the world tilts. Colors start to bleed, the ground loses Haruka’s feet. He feels the pull this time, like something has hold of his head and is dragging him underwater only to drag him out again far away. The pull into next time, and he throws out his arms to stop it in its tracks. His hand hits something solid; he closes his fingers around Rin’s wrist and tugs, and the walls and floors align themselves once again.

They’re in the hall. Did he chase Rin all the way here? His head is spinning, his vision wavers on the edge of focus.

“Haru, what do you want?”

Rin’s wrist is still in his hand, solid and warm, the knob of a bone. He blinks hard, finds Rin’s face and squints his eyes to keep it from blurring out.

“I want to ask you things.”

“You already have,” Rin says. He sounds and looks defeated; his hand is limp in Haruka’s grasp.

“What are you?”

“I’m…I’m me,” Rin says in a small voice.

“That’s not good enough.”

“What are you?” Rin asks defensively. He pulls his arm away, holds it to his chest like he’s been wounded.

“I’m –” Haruka starts, tone rising, but he shuts his jaw, teeth clicking. “I’m me,” he says, feeling stupid. Because that’s all he really knows he is. Because it a place like this, who knows what anything is.

Rin frowns. Disappointment, or accusation, or both. “You see? So stop acting like there’s something wrong.”

“Stop ignoring my questions.”

“Stop always trying to figure everything out.”

“Stop telling me what to do!”

Rin lets out a laugh that might also be a cough, or might be him choking. He grabs Haruka by the shoulders, shakes him. “Then tell _me_. Tell me what to do. Tell me what’s going on.”

Rin’s eyes are pleading again. They are so red, red as fire and his hair and the slow-boil Haruka feels in his veins, and all he can think is:

What does loving mean? How does it work? What do you do? How do you do it when there are things you don’t love in what you love?

* * *

It’s too bright. He can see the flush topping Rin’s cheekbones. He can see the points of Rin’s teeth bared in a nervous smile, and then they’re hidden in the kiss Rin gives him.

He sinks into the pillows, and his hands fall from Rin’s back to _fwump_ down on either side of his head. He shudders in a breath when Rin kisses his chin, then the underside of his jaw. He can feel Rin’s heat along every inch of his body, feels him like they’ve lost their clothing and like there’s something more immediate to Rin’s hips settled between his thighs. He feels like there’s water pouring into his lungs, too much to be able to breathe, but at the same time he wants to sink farther, sink right into the spaces between Rin’s atoms, or pull Rin into the spaces between his.

Teeth scrape, barely so, against his neck – a prick that would be pain with just that tiniest bit more pressure, but that is soothed with the press of lips right after.

And then Rin stills, and his exhale skirts over Haruka’s skin.

“You can just tell me to stop.”

Haruka realizes that his hands are fists, that Rin has taken hold of one of them.

“You don’t have to,” he says. They are the only words he has, for some reason.

Rin lifts himself up, sits back on his ankles. “Don’t be stupid. You don’t want this.”

Haruka looks at Rin through the space between his knees. “That’s not it.”

Rin gives a quiet snort, but the lift of his lips is kind. “You’re scared,” he says, and though it isn’t derisive Haruka finds himself bristling.

“I’m not.”

Rin sighs. “Haru.”

Haruka turns his face away, cheek into the pillow. “I’m not afraid of you.”

The bed creaks, and he feels Rin lean back over him. Rin’s hands plant themselves around his head, and he has nowhere to look but back up.

“I didn’t say that,” Rin says. “But I’m saying that you don’t know what you want.”

“I’m trying.”

There is a wince between Rin’s brows, an expression that is painstaking, but painstakingly full of what? Love? Or is that just the needy, nervous feeling in Haruka’s chest?

Rin shakes his head, then lowers himself down slowly, gently. He works an arm beneath Haruka’s back.

And holds him. Not even tightly, just enough.

Haruka stares at where the ceiling is, and all he’s really aware of is a pointy nose against his shoulder, like an insistent nudge.

“Sor-”

Rin makes a shushing sound, turns his head and the nudge is gone. “Shut up. You never apologize about anything.” He doesn’t sound angry, just ready for the conversation to end when he says, “Stop bottling things up.”

So Haruka lifts an arm, settles his hand against Rin’s back, and says, “Stop telling me what to do.”

* * *

And then one time, he wakes up. And he feels rested but still tired, like he’s been curled up so long that his joints have to remember what it’s like to move. The blanket is tangled up around him, covering his head but not his feet; he clutches some of it in his hands.

His room is shadowy, and through his curtains comes a single line of sunlight. The carpet is soft against his feet, the hallway cool. His stomach gnaws at his insides, and he drifts to the fridge with half-drawn eyelids and a hand on the side of his face like a makeshift pillow – or maybe his fingers are stuck in his hair, he’s never felt so much like he’s made it through a typhoon.

He eats pickled vegetables and rice, bitter and bland, out of a Tupperware in the darkness of his kitchen, standing in the middle of the room with his vision out of focus. His head feels stuffed full of wet cotton, deafening and muffled all at once. There’s been too much yelling recently, too much vitriol from his own mouth, he feels like it’s run his battery flat. He wants to be alone for a century, but the mere thought makes him miss everyone enough that he forgets to keep chewing, and he just stares off into a corner feeling glum.   

Like it’s been cued, his doorbell rings several times in rapid-fire succession. He jumps, and the plastic container slips from his fingers and rice and vegetables fan across the floor, some grains finding their way between his toes.  

He goes to the door, knowing who it is but still anticipating the first glimpse of hair and teeth and eyes.

“Um, hi,” Rin says on the doorstep, looking less put-together than usual, a baseball cap pulled low over his head. He gives a hopeful smile, holds up a plastic bag. Then his eyes travel to Haruka’s hair. “Did I wake you up?”

“No,” Haruka says. “I was eating.”  

They sit on the steps, eating popsicles. Rin’s is red and Haruka’s is blue – grape? hybrid chemical berry? He feels it staining his tongue.

“Okay,” Rin says, slowly and tentatively, like he’s asking Haruka to listen but also not to laugh. He stalls for a moment, staring down the stairs. “So I had this weird dream. You were in it, but it was kinda…”

Rin’s ears are red, and Haruka feels a nervous flutter in his stomach.

“It was really weird.”

“Okay,” Haruka says.

“Not like – not like bad weird,” Rin says quickly. “Just weird weird.”

“Okay.”

Rin laughs, runs a hand over his face. There is a red spot on his jaw, a pimple waiting to emerge probably, and probably painful to the touch.  

“But you know I didn’t really come here to talk to you about my weird dream.”

Haruka didn’t know that, simply because he still doesn’t know why Rin came here at all. He keeps thinking Rin should be angry, or sad, because he feels guilty, keeps hearing himself yelling and keeps seeing Rin’s face falling like Haruka had taken something out of him and stomped on it. Makoto’s house looming overhead doesn’t make him feel any better; he finds he can’t quite raise his eyes to look at it.

“I’m sorry,” Rin says. “In the locker room. About everything. I’m sorry.”

The silence lasts a while – there’s an unwinding feeling to it, something necessary. And then Rin’s popsicle ice splatters onto the step. It melts in seconds, and the slush starts to dribble down to the next step.

“It’s okay,” Haruka says. He hesitates, feels the words catch. Coughs to clear his throat. “Me too.”

He looks over at Rin at the same moment that Rin looks at him. Rin gives a laugh that is a bit embarrassed and a bit relieved, and his ears are still red, and he holds Haruka’s eyes just long enough that when he looks away, Haruka feels more flutters, but also surety.

“You gonna finish that?” Rin asks.

It takes Haruka a moment of staring at the side of Rin’s face before he feels something cold dripping down his hand. He immediately holds the popsicle away, and the ice falls off the stick and joins Rin’s on the steps.

“Guess not,” Rin says, biting back a flash of a smile. He braces his hands on his knees, gets to his feet.

There is a fortune slip in his back pocket, the ends crinkled but the shape unmistakable. Haruka feels déjà-vu like a lurch in his brain, but Rin turns around and the familiarity is gone.

Rin holds out a hand, palm up – like he’s trying to look gallant, because who offers to help someone up like that? Haruka feels a little ridiculous when he takes it, and feels like he’s forgotten his breath somewhere when Rin grips back and pulls him up – too fast to be gallant, nothing gentle about it at all.  

And then Rin lets go, starts heading down the stairs. He raises an arm, beckons Haruka to follow with a lazy flick of his wrist.

“C’mon, I’m gonna take you somewhere.”

“Where?” Haruka asks, still on the top step.

Rin looks back over his shoulder, grins up at him. “Australia, of course.”

Rin is crazy. He’s crazy and his teeth are all wrong and he asks for things Haruka should never be able to give, and he makes Haruka feel like he’s trying to catch the very light in his hands.

So Haruka takes a breath, pushes away _No_ and thinks he might pull Rin a little closer by doing so, and says, “Don’t I have to pack?”


End file.
